FOLLOWING UP

FOLLOWING UP; Seafaring Smuggler Awaits His Freedom

By JOSEPH P. FRIED

Published: October 1, 2000

The first time that Amir Humuntal Lumban Tobing, an Indonesian mariner, was washed up into the American legal system, it was in a wave of international notoriety.

He was the captain of the Golden Venture, above, a decrepit freighter that was grounded off the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens in 1993 after plans to land the boat's cargo of nearly 300 illegal Chinese immigrants went awry. Ten immigrants drowned or died of hypothermia after swimming toward shore, and nearly all the rest were taken into custody by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The incident was among the first to focus attention on the large-scale smuggling of Chinese to the United States.

Mr. Tobing served 41 months in a federal prison after pleading guilty to conspiring in the scheme. At his 1994 sentencing in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, he apologized, saying the smugglers had forcibly gained control of the ship.

He cooperated in the investigation, which led to guilty pleas and varying sentences for more than 20 smugglers and crew members. He completed his sentence in February 1997 and returned to Indonesia.

Today, Mr. Tobing, 51, is again in a federal prison in the United States. In December 1997, he was captured with two Americans several miles off the Washington State coast near the end of a two-and-a-half-month journey across the Pacific from Thailand in a 54-foot sailboat. The cargo was 12,000 pounds of marijuana.

Mr. Tobing and the crew pleaded guilty to conspiring in drug smuggling, and he was sentenced to seven years in prison.

At his sentencing last November in Federal District Court in Seattle, Mr. Tobing once more apologized, recalled his lawyer, David S. Marshall. Mr. Marshall said that in a recent telephone conversation from the federal prison in Michigan where he is now in dry dock, Mr. Tobing indicated that home shores beckoned. ''He's eager to get back to Indonesia and see his family,'' the lawyer said. JOSEPH P. FRIED